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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Godslayer: Nordgaard Faction

Hi, welcome to yet another review! This time we will take a look at the Nordgaard faction of the new epic fantasy skirmish game called Godslayer manufactured by Megalith Games. This epic game of good and evil is set in the rich and detailed fantasy universe named Calydorn, Godslayer is created to be a fast and tactically challenging tabletop skirmish game played with detailed metal miniatures. The skirmish game is designed for two or more players and offers a totally new gaming experience with many aspects never before seen. As a skirmish game Godslayer allows players to field a group of warriors in combat engagements. These so called warbands represent hunting parties, scouting forces, raiders or simply bands of adventurers, mercenaries, or bandits.

Background of Nordgaard

Far to the north, where the white winds howl and the lands are draped with snow, there stands between the glacial heights the adamant kingdom of Nordgaard. Steel and stone, flesh and bone, where the earth still speaks and the mountains reach from the fjords to the very sky; Nordgaard is a realm steeped in myth, a land which the Jotuns once called their own. Dwarf and Mortal now share this land with a culture fused as one, for common threat was the fire which forged this union in ancient days of yore. The Eternal Kingdom the nation is named, for Nordgaard stands as the oldest realm among the lands of Ghorn. Interested in the entire epic story go to the fluff section at Megalith Games.

The box

The starterset arrived swift and extremely well-packed in a large cartonboard box preventing shipping damage even when thrown around during the shipping! When opening the large box, I stumbled upon the two starter sets and the ruleset (of which I will write another review later on) and was really surprised by the awesome quality of box art design and the miniatures depicted on the box.

When carefully opening the Nordgaard starterset I found a neat fast-play rule pamflet, a pack of unit cards and the miniatures. All these bits and the miniatures were nicely packed between several layers of foam allowing you to use the box as a transport box for the warband when adding some extra foam and cut it to size.

The Nordgaard faction starter set contains 8 highly detailled miniatures and allows you to field a 160 point warband whih is the normal size for small skirmish battles with one warlord. The miniatures itself came in individual ziplock bags as they exist out of multiple parts such as the bodies, arms, shields and other pieces for the character models. The miniatures is the starterset are the feared Warsmith armed with his powerful warhammer able of smashing skull and splinthering bone with powerful blows, the Brewer of Odrorir provides the fighting men with enough ale to keep their spirit high but also helping them in close combat. These powerful characters are supported by 6 stout Fjell warriors including a fierce commander and musician who form the bulk of every Nordgaard warband.

As said the starterset also includes nicely designed character cards for every unit or character allowing you to easily remember the specific rules and mark their suffered wounds. These cards contains all the information you need to play the units such as their movement, melee, defence skills and other important skills. The back of each unit card contains the special rules of the miniatures so you never need to browse the rulebook for specific terms or effects.

The assembly

The assembly of this miniatures was quite straight forward but never the less I will guide you through the assembly. As said the miniatures were casted well and did not need lots of cleaning before the assembly except for some adjustments with a small vile to ensure a tight connection for the glue. The miniatures came in individual ziplock bags so you didn't need to search for the right parts in a large pile which was nice.

First of all I decided to assemble the Fjell warriors as they looked the easiest miniatures to assemble. The first variant existed out of three parts: the body and both arms while the second variant existed out of four parts: the body, both arms and a seperate arm with axe. The assembly of these four stout warriors proved easy only using a small vile on rare occasions. The next miniatures were the Fjell warrior command existing out of the commander and musician as with the regular warriors, the assembly was easy. The captain of the Fjell warriors is one of my favorite sculpts of this warband.

Having practised a bit with the regular soldiers it was now time to assemble the characters as the Warsmith and the Brewer. The Warsmith only consisted out of two parts and with a bit of hammer bending, the hammer and the attached arms fitted the body exactly leaving no visable gap! The brewer was the most difficult model of the bunch consisting out of 5 parts of some which were rather heavy. As you can see on the picture the brewer stands on a barrel only leaving one foot standing on the ground making it much more difficult to attach him to his plastic base.

All of these miniatures were attached to their plastic bases using some regular green stuff which can be bought in good model shops or online. I choose for this option of I prefer this method when attaching metal slotta base miniatures to their plastic bases. To do so I have cut down the slotta on the miniatures some mm as they would otherwise be a bit bigger than the slotta gap in the plastic base. After that I make a small thin role of greenstuff and lay it in the base then pushing the miniature's base slotta in the gap and filling the holes up with more greens stuff. When dry, the green stuff is rock solid and the miniatures are firmly hold in place.

Please note that none of the shields were yet attached as it would otherwise be to difficult to paint the miniatures.

The conclusion

To conclude this Nordgaard faction starterset, I can only say great quality and fit for skirmish miniatures! The miniatures are well casted and are easy to assembly with some glue and greenstuff. The boxed set includes everything you need to play with the exception of dices and a ruler so two starter sets allow you to immediatly play the game so no need to immediatly buy the rulebook allowing you to graduatly increase the number of special rules and battle tactics. This starterset now retails at €39.95 and is available directly from Megalith Games.

Stay tuned as a review of the Trologdyte starterset and the rulebook will hopefully follow soon!